Google is preparing to lay the first underwater fiber optic cable connecting Africa and Australia. The new cable, called Umoja, will be an important piece of infrastructure that will improve the connection of African countries with each other and the rest of the world.

The laying of the cable began at a time when power outages were becoming more frequent in Africa due to damage to submarine cables. For a cloud and digital services company, seamless connectivity is crucial. Therefore, Google aims to strengthen its position in the African market by offering a reliable solution.

The Umoji route will pass through several countries in Eastern and Southern Africa, including Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, before reaching South Africa, where Google’s first African regional data center is located. The ground portion of the route has already been built with the help of Liquid Intelligent Technologies.

Work is currently underway to lay the underwater section of the cable across the Indian Ocean to Perth (Australia). Although exact timelines for completion of the project have not been announced, a Google representative stated that the typical duration of laying the submarine cable from planning to commissioning is approximately three years. Therefore, Umoja is expected to be ready for use around 2026.

According to Brian Quigley, Google Cloud’s vice president of global network infrastructure, the new cable will allow African countries to connect more reliably with each other and the rest of the world, which is critical to maintaining network resilience in a region . It has faced serious disruptions before. .

Laying submarine cables is a strategic focus for major technology companies such as Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft. These infrastructure investments help improve the quality of service, whether for consumers consuming content or businesses using cloud computing.